I definitely should have laid off on the obvious flirtation with Nick.

Colleen Hoover -- Slammed

The rumors were true: Sixteen writers have been laid off at Nick’s magazine.

Gillian Flynn -- Gone Girl

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"My dad’s got laid off, and Brenda and Ellie are fit to fry ’em they can’t have new clothes for Easter."

Katherine Paterson -- Bridge to Terabithia

"I’ve had to start laying off some of my wait staff."

Anne Tayler -- A Spool of Blue Thread

He’d been a machinist here for years, but got laid off a while back.

David Baldacci -- Zero Day

His mom had recently been laid off from her job cleaning rooms at a Days Inn, and Lorenzo’s dad was burning through twelve-packs of Milwaukee’s Best on a regular basis.

Joshua Davis -- Spare Parts

They started layoffs just about at once.

Ayn Rand -- Atlas Shrugged

’the next round of layoffs’

Ellen Hopkins -- Crank

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In a few weeks, let’s say at the end of August, Erika will call a meeting to warn you about layoffs.

Stieg Larsson -- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Depression cut deeply into rail freight, and layoffs crippled the livelihoods of James and many of his fellow "Rails."

James Bradley -- Flags of Our Fathers

But just as she began building, the economy took a slide: there were layoffs, the stock market plummeted, and suddenly everyone was tentative with their dollars, especially when it came to real estate.

Sarah Dessen -- The Truth About Forever

In return, he brings me home, all the way home, telling about layoffs at the mill, about who died and where the funeral was.

Rick Bragg -- All Over but the Shoutin’

Rival trainers who claimed horses from Irwin sometimes found them so exhausted that they had to give them long layoffs before they were capable of running again.

Laura Hillenbrand -- Seabiscuit

Suppose the husband has a job and is buying a house and there’s a layoff.

John Steinbeck -- Travels with Charley

But he still suffered occasional layoffs—which were sometimes prolonged enough to cause hardship.

James Raskob, President, CEO and Chief Engineer of AMTAC had managed to keep the company together, with a lot of layoffs, admittedly, despite the bad times.

John Ringo -- Live Free or Die

She read budget calculations, advertising and marketing projections, an exchange with CFO Sellberg that went on for a week and was virtually a brawl over staff layoffs.

Stieg Larsson -- The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

That’s why I laid off you for liking him.

Simone Elkeles -- Perfect Chemistry

I figured that if I laid off gradually, by the time I entered high school in the fall, I could start fresh, no longer be known as "the cellist."

Gayle Forman -- If I Stay

He went first to Norfolk and worked at a shipyard for six months before he was laid off, then moved to New Jersey because he’d heard the economy wasn’t so bad there.

Nicholas Sparks -- The Notebook

I said I would, and everybody laid off projecting for a while.

John Wyndham -- The Chrysalids

After I graduated from school I went to work for the Santa Fe railroad, and stayed until the following winter when I got laid off.

Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood

They were brilliant, but they couldn’t get the jobs they wanted, and public teaching was what they did because it was security and it had a pension and you didn’t get laid off.

Malcolm Gladwell -- Outliers

But he laid off me.

S.E. Hinton -- The Outsiders

They couldn’t afford all those temple sacrifices, so they laid off Helios and Selene and folded their duties into our job descriptions.

Rick Riordan -- The Titan’s Curse

There were Hallmark cards for bereavement, for loss of a beloved pet, for getting laid off from a job, but no one seemed to have the right words of comfort for someone whose son had just killed ten people.

Jodi Picoult -- Nineteen Minutes

In one day, the company laid off nearly a third of its employees-and Cedric got a pink slip.

Ron Suskind -- A Hope in the Unseen

Granpa laid off the rows with the plow and ol’ Sam.

Forest Carter -- Education of Little Tree

One day Sissy was laid off from work and decided to go over and look after Francie and Neeley while Katie was working.

Betty Smith -- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

He had laid off his hat and gloves and was now fidgeting with the little toilet pieces which were nearest him.

Theodore Dreiser -- Sister Carrie

He laid off his coat and hat and began his preparations.

Mark Twain -- Pudd’nhead Wilson

He’d been laid off at the plant two months earlier and had been spending most nights there, an angry man looking for pity and solace in the company of alcoholics.

Nicholas Sparks -- The Guardian

Reservation people were the first ones to get laid off because white people in Gallup already knew they wouldn’t ask any questions or get angry; they just walked away.

Leslie Marmon Silko -- Ceremony

I could have laid off him a little.

Chris Crutcher -- Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

After his release, he went to work on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico but was laid off in the fall of 2008.

Dave Eggers -- Zeitoun

"But here, young man," went on the elder, laying off his overcoat and fishing in his trousers pocket.

Theodore Dreiser -- An American Tragedy

Dominican chocolate was not especially in demand that season and the Puerto Rican owners laid off the majority of the employees for a couple of months.

Junot Diaz -- Drown

Finery laid off is as unappetizing as the remains of a feast, and it occurred to Lily that, at home, her maid’s vigilance had always spared her the sight of such incongruities.

Edith Wharton -- The House of Mirth

He assembled parts for military aircraft, which paid well but didn’t do much for his soul, so getting laid off during a slowdown was a blessing.

Steve Lopez -- The Soloist

So I laid off the topic, and we used the spare time to take color pictures of Caligula on my arm in front of the cathedral; until mounted officers who appeared to gallop out of the gates of a ministry drove us off the plaza.

Saul Bellow -- The Adventures of Augie March

Ishmael recollected his father at work here, his neatly arranged manila folders spread out before him, his yellow legal pad laid off to his right, an array of heavily scrawled index cards, onionskin typing paper in both goldenrod and white, a thick dictionary on a stand, a thicker thesaurus, and a heavy black Underwood typewriter, the desk lamp pulled down low over the keys and his father blinking through his bifocals, slow and expressionless, absorbed in his words, afloat in that pool…

David Guterson -- Snow Falling on Cedars

Dale laid off his sombrero and leaned forward, holding his rifle between his knees.

Zane Grey -- The Man of the Forest

Frank, Jr., the brooding bear, had been laid off his job.

Peter Jenkins -- A Walk Across America

I had let it ride, laying off some lame excuse like I had to get uptown even though I was carrying my ball.

Walter Dean Myers -- Slam!

Then about a year ago, they laid off the whole department.

Octavia Butler -- Kindred

Later, when my father had been laid off from his job, this woman became very important to us.

James Baldwin -- Notes of a Native Son

Jimmy hadn’t laid off the bet with bookies who could handle those sums.

Don DeLillo -- Underworld

Factories that weren’t laying off workers en masse were shutting down entirely.